Chapter Twenty
There was a woman lying on the living room couch watching television. She barely looked up when Todd entered the room.
'Who was it at the door?'
'Me,' Todd answered as he walked up behind her and clamped a hand over her mouth. He zapped her and taped her up before she could make a noise.
An old man who was probably the husband of the woman he'd cracked at the front door, was sitting in the den typing away on a laptop when Todd stormed into the room. The old guy jumped and almost fell out of his chair.
'Jesus! Who the fuck are you?'
'I'm sort of a Pro-Life activist also.'
The old guy squinted, trying to see Todd standing in the darkened doorway. He fumbled for his glasses on his cluttered desk.
'What organization are you with?'
Todd stepped further into the room.
'Mass-Murderers for the Preservation of Animal Life.'
The old guy found his glasses and slipped them onto his crinkled, liver-spotted scalp.
'Mass-Murderers? Wha-what?'
Todd stepped closer and the old guy flicked on his desktop lamp and turned it up so that it shone directly onto Todd's face.
The old guy looked Todd up and down, noting the bloody hammer still clutched in Todd's hand and the stun gun clasped in his other hand. He reached into his desk and Todd sprinted across the room and cracked him with the hammer before he could pull the. 357 Colt magnum revolver out of his top drawer. The gun tumbled to the floor and so did the old man. Todd tried not to look at the old guy bleeding on the floor as he reached into his bag and retrieved the duct tape.
Though the man looked nothing like either his father or the priest, the old guy was probably twenty years older than his father had been when he'd taken his own life, something about the scene reminded him of the night of his mother's funeral. The night Todd lost both of his parents.
The old man moaned and struggled meekly as Todd taped his arms behind his back and put tape on his eyes and mouth. Todd picked up the gun, checked the barrel, then clicked it back into place and cocked the hammer. He left the room and headed back out into the hallway. There were voices coming from the kitchen. Todd walked into the kitchen and pointed the gun from one face to the other. He was greeted with a chorus of screams. There were several women sitting at the small kitchen table sipping coffee and eating some kind of coffee cakes. They jumped up quickly, knocking over chairs and dropping cups to the floor.
'Shut the fuck up and sit back down. One more sound and I will kill every last one of you.'
Todd tossed a roll of tape to a teenage girl wearing a ponytail who was just starting to show. She looked to be about three or four months pregnant. There were four other women, two more that appeared to be in their early teens, a black woman in her thirties and a Filipino woman in her early to mid-twenties. They were all in varying stages of pregnancy.
'Tape their hands behind their backs or I start shooting.'
Three more women came rushing into the kitchen and Todd turned the gun toward them. A huge white woman with curlers in her hair, a robe that barely concealed her massive belly and gigantomastic breasts that each appeared to weigh as much as small Thanksgiving turkeys, shrieked like a cat in a microwave when she spotted the gun. Todd cracked the butt of the revolver across her lips. Teeth flew from her mouth against the wall and she staggered backwards almost knocking over the other two women. Todd noted with surprise that the voice he normally heard in his head, the one that was always questioning his actions, telling him that he was going too far, begging him to stop, was silent. Even when the woman dropped slowly to her knees, sobbing and holding her bleeding mouth, Todd felt nothing at all.
'Get over there with the rest of them.' He gestured with the gun toward the women sitting at the table and the three new arrivals shuffled over there hugging each other. Todd tossed the other three rolls of tape to the three girls.
'Tape up the rest of them.'
He pointed at the teenage girl he'd singled out earlier.
'I'll tape you up myself. You make sure everyone else is bound nice and tight. Don't think you're doing anyone any favors by not taping them up good. I'll be checking everyone's wrists and ankles when you're done. If anyone gets free I'm shooting them dead as an example to everyone else.'
'Don't kill us, Mister. We're pregnant. We're all pregnant. This is a shelter for pregnant women.'
'I know exactly what this place is.' There was no expression on his face at all as he pointed the gun at the girls.
'We don't have any money.'
'I don't want any.'
'Well, we-we'll do whatever you want. Just don't kill us. Don't hurt us.'
'I don't want to fuck you either. Now everybody stop talking. Tape their mouths closed.'
The three girls finished taping up the other four girls and then one by one the teenage girl with the ponytail taped them up as well. After she'd put the gags on their mouths she turned to face Todd.
'Please don't hurt me.'
'Turn around.'
She did as she was told and Todd taped her wrists behind her back like the seven other women.
'Sit in the chair.'
'Please, don't.'
'I told you. I'm not going to kill you.'
She sat down and Todd taped her ankles to the chair legs. He pulled off another strip of tape and placed it over her eyes.
'Are there any more women in the house? Anyone else here I should know about?'
The girl shook her head.
'I don't like surprises. If anyone surprises me you'll all die.'
Todd ripped off another piece of tape.
'My name is Mary. I'm having a daughter. Her name is going to be Kelli.'
Todd paused. He knew what she was doing. Trying to make herself real to him, to make herself more of a human being. She thought that would make it harder for him to kill her. Todd waited, expecting the sting of conscience to hit him.
'My daughter's name is going to be Kelli. She's my second child. My other daughter is Cindy. She's two years old. Her birthday was last week.'
He felt nothing. Killing his own child had taken away the last vestiges of his humanity. Todd put the tape over her mouth. He leaned forward and whispered into Mary's ear.
'You're going to have to give all your love to the child you have now.'
He rubbed her belly with the palm of his hand.
'This one ain't going to make it.'
Todd reached into his bag and pulled out a scalpel and a wire hanger. He knelt down beside Mary and began cutting off her pajamas. He cut up the inside of her pants leg all the way to her crotch and down the opposite leg.
'This is really going to hurt but it will be worth it. You are going to save so many people and thousands of plants and animals just by not having this child.'
After straightening the hanger out until it was just a long thin wire with a hook on the end of it, Todd parted her labia with his thumb and index fingers and began winding the hanger up inside of her. The blood came almost
